Avec L'amour
by Vegetarian Salad
Summary: Sometimes, we just need to be reminded. Drabbles.
1. Skin

Note from the Author: I'm done with the Naruto fan fiction scene for a while because I'm frustrated with my stories. -.- I'm sorry to those of you waiting for my updates.

_**Skin**_

Bare feet pad across the floor, toes curving as the arch shapes itself, porcelain and elegant and lovely. Pale skin stretches over protruding anklebones, and the muscles in those shins shift visibly beneath her flesh as she stalks toward me, like a cat; disdainful, beautiful, perfect.

I wonder if I have been dreaming this.

The legs stop beside my head, and her pretty, knobby knees touch the carpet. Spindly fingers are brushing my hair back from my forehead, as if shooing a mosquito, and they linger across my skin, cool and comforting. Her eyes burn wherever they meet my face.

I break the silence like a hammer to glass, shattering the mime's box around us as I ask her purpose.

Her smile is gentle as her red, red lips brush my cheekbone, and her voice, so husky and feminine, whispers as she crawls beneath the blankets beside me: "I was just making sure I'm really not alone."


	2. Light

Note from the Author: No, I don't know what's wrong with me, but thanks for wondering!

_**Light**_

There is a deathly lack of air in the room to which I wake. A sense of foreboding fills this darkness and I can not place the source of my distress.

I lift myself, feeling as though I haven't moved at all. I am only aware of my bed beneath me, my sheets pooling comfortingly in my lap as I scan the emptiness.

The silence. That is what unnerves me so in this moment. The dreadful ringing of nothing in my ears. My chin makes gentle acquaintance with my knee, reminding me I am still a physical being.

It clicks in my lethargic mind, whose wheels are just beginning to turn again out of slumber, that there has been a power outage. The dull thrum of electricity has failed to penetrate my ears, and my bony fingers wrap around my bony ankles in an attempt to not be afraid.

The silence seems to be pregnant with presence, with excitement, as if something is on the verge of happening. When I was a child, sudden silence inspired a fear of explosions in me, of anticipation of nuclear annihilations from which I couldn't hide, and this panic returns to me now, rising in my chest like a living entity, like a prayer.

A candle flickers to life near what I assume in my disorientation is my doorway, and your sweet face is illuminated by it, but I am sure you glow all on your own. Just as your pretty soprano voice rises to comfort me, asking if I am alright, a rumble sounds as of a creature awakening, and you touch the light switch.

The room bursts into bright fluorescence, and you blow the candle out with a puff, smiling at me through the snow as I hug my knees. I wonder in moments like these if you are not the only light in my life.


	3. Remedy

Note from the Author: … I don't even know anymore.

_**Remedy**_

I press a pink handkerchief over my nose and mouth, pretending it is a pink gas mask and not my attempt to prevent a cough from escaping the prison that is my throat. I am cushioned deeply in a nest of comforters and cotton sheets.

Her bony foot taps on the corner of a pillow she snatched from her own bedroom to sit on it. The bone that juts so lovingly from her knee serves as a table for a notebook, across whose lines are scrawled determined words. Her pen is pressed pensively between the third joints of her middle and index fingers, like she is a young girl pretending it is the ever-present cigarette that Audrey Hepburn made so elegant.

I smile at the absence of a real cigarette, knowing that this is none pressed between her plump ruby lips because it causes me discomfort. That beautifully-scowling mouth turns with disdain in my direction, her round eyes dark with irritated concern. "Why aren't you drinking your tea?" Her husky alto seems more pronounced without evidence of its cause.

I make a point to sip the sweetened liquid to satisfy her, and am pleased to watch the worry smooth from her face. The tea soothes my throat, but her love is my real remedy.


	4. Journey

Your car is that pretty magenta of raspberry sherbet. Parked always between two black clones, it is a flower blooming through concrete. It suits you. I wonder if you are bursting into color through me.

My boot rests black against the dashboard, and my arm is engulfed in smoke spraying feverishly from the glowing end of my cigarette as it hangs obediently out the window. Your car smells clean, and you want to keep it that way. You are pure, and I would protect you if I could.

Sunglasses swallow your eyes, and your glossed smile is content when your face turns to me, your hair whipping happily against your perfect porcelain skin, cheeks painted pink with summer sunshine.

I have trouble now pretending to be unimpressed, and I cannot help the smile that lights on my lips before my cigarette presses into my mouth. The expressway offers us a home for the moment, and, with the windows rolled down, and the speedometer nearing seventy, even through my dark glasses, the world is bright.


	5. Hope

Bodies press close, a cocoon of sweating, writhing skin. Pale faces are suspended in air as black lights do not capture their dark clothing. Through my heels, the floor vibrates, a cacophony of dancing boots and the off-key voices of people singing.

I am quiet and still, my face tilted toward the stage, a child looking to a savior for guidance. The lights fall fluorescent around my shoes, avoiding me because I am not a part of this energy. A haze has fallen across my sight, but my ears are clear, and a silhouette of her image is in my mind.

She is different when she sings. She is divine, she is beautiful and blind. Her eyelashes shimmer dark against her closed eyelids, and her lovely red mouth kisses the microphone in the softest way. Her femininity radiates through her voice and I do not forget how perfect she is.

When I come here, I feel out of my element, and my skirt opposes the straight-legged jeans of fraying teenagers, and I wonder what gives them the hope that drives them to thrash so joyfully as they do. But then I look up at her, and her dark eyes smile softly into mine, like we are the world and this is our universe, and I remember my own hope too.


	6. Flight

Note from the Author: Oh, it continues. This was written on the flight from New York City to Nice.

**Flight**

My hand is wrapped tightly around the armrest, and if I wasn't so sure I was going to my death, I would be fascinated by the way my knuckles jut sharply through my skin. My grip is harsh to the point of pain, and I squeeze my eyes shut, biting my lip as the giant monster machine growls.

You laughed when you learned I am afraid of flying. "You are fearless!" You exclaimed. "You are unstoppable."

How I wish that was true now. How I pray for the nerve that triggers fear to disappear. I think my fingers may be welded to their lifeline. The plane has tilted its balance, and I press against my seat, hoping to sink into and through it, back to the safety of the solid, predictable earth. I don't dare to open my eyes. This sensation in my stomach of falling can only be a premonition of our impending doom, right?

Your hand closes over mine, your warm fingers prying mine gently away, and I hold onto you instead, finding much more comfort in your touch. You laugh gently and urge me to open my eyes.

I do, and meet yours, and then your gaze strays beyond me, and mine follows unbidden. Through the tiny window, my view shows me the houses sinking away, the land becoming nothing more than a dwarf beneath a sky that dominates. It is beautiful and horrifying, and I say so.

You lean on your hand, a soft smile offered for the wisps of cloud the vehicle tears asunder. You agree quietly, that it is always devastating to realize you're larger than life.

Our fingers lace, and we watch the scenery melt into mist, like a dream forgotten. I smile at the settling of my nerves. We are much larger than life.


End file.
